GK Fic: Tennessee Waltz (B/N, NC-17) 3/4
Master Post
Part One
Part Two
After recovering a bit from his hangover, not to mention the capricious depredations of Hurricane Ray, Nate eventually decided to take his advice on the shower, though not the part about the maid. Or the part about burning his house down, because even in his current state Nate wasn’t emo enough for that.
Instead he cleaned the place himself, slowly. He didn’t nearly get to everything, but he cleared off the coffee table and picked up the worst of the trash, and if the dishes weren’t washed, at least they were now all in the kitchen. It was as good a way as any to pass the time if he wasn’t going to the store to get more bourbon.
And he wasn’t, yet.
In a supremely fucked-up way, Ray’s promise to return, bizarro!Terminator-like as it was, had given Nate something to look forward to. Even if Ray showed up escorting guys with butterfly nets to take him to the loony bin (which Nate thought was probably a little over-the-top even for Ray), it would at least be different. Maybe something worth staying sober for, even.
Most likely, though, Ray had just lied through his teeth about not saying anything to Walt, and Nate was going to find a posse composed of Ray, Walt, Rudy, his mother, his second-grade English teacher, and fucking Dr. Phil camped on his doorstep, all just itching for an intervention.
Well, whatever. He’d always wanted a chance to tell Dr. Phil that he was full of shit.
+
The man was coming for him in the hallway.
Nate panted and scrabbled against the shadowed air, but it held him like a fly in amber, trapping his feet, squeezing his lungs. He couldn’t move, and the man was coming for him.
Panic screamed across his nerves, but the jellied air oozed down his throat, and he couldn’t scream aloud. He couldn’t make a sound, and the man was coming for him.
He didn’t want to see the man, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away. And the man reached him, and smiled, and the bat came down and Nate saw it was going to smash in his face -
Nate lunged awake in his bed, shaking and drenched in sweat, and lurched into the bathroom just in time. He vomited noisily in the toilet, and afterwards he clutched himself to it for a moment, resting his cheek against the cool porcelain.
Now we remember why we don’t go to bed sober, don’t we, Nathaniel?
Nate waited until the shaking had subsided enough for him to stand, and then went back into his bedroom and started pulling on clothes. There was a 24-hour liquor store a mile from here.
Fuck Ray. If he wanted to have an intervention, Nate might as well give him his money’s worth.
+
Brad was standing in the doorway.
Well, a Brad-shaped figure was, anyway. Because it couldn’t actually be Brad. That was absurd.
Nate blinked, and squinted against the way-too-fucking-bright sunlight streaming in past the hypothetically-Brad-shaped person on his porch. When had he answered the door? Maybe this meant he’d finally destroyed all his brain cells and was now having alcohol-induced hallucinations. Pretty impressive for a mere one-month bender; Nate was obscurely proud of himself.
“Nate?”
“It’s supposed to take years,” he told the Brad-shape, “but here you are already!” He frowned. “No pink elephants, though. I distinctly recall that I was promised pink elephants. Maybe they come later.”
He waved it away, and headed back to the living room, peripherally aware that the Brad-shape was following him. He needed to sit down, only the coffee table jumped in the way. “Insolent,” he muttered, as the Brad-shape grabbed him just in time to keep him upright.
“Unhand me, specter!” he declaimed, and giggled, shoving his bad hand in the Brad-shape’s face. “Unhand, get it? ‘S funny. Like Shakespeare.”
“Hilarious, sir. Maybe you should sit down.”
“Amazing, you even sound like him,” Nate said dreamily, as he magnanimously allowed himself to be lowered onto the couch. “Magnanimous is a good word,” he informed the Brad-shape. “It means ‘lofty and kinglike’. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“I did know that, actually.”
“Liar,” Nate accused, and then laughed to show he didn’t mean it. There was no need to be mean, after all.
Nate lost track of things for a moment, and then the Brad-shape was offering him a glass of water.
“Here, Nate. Drink.”
“Uh-uh,” he refused. “If you eat or drink in the fairies’ land, you can never go back to the real world. I’m here strictly on a time-share basis.”
He thought he heard a sigh. “The fairies are making an exception in this case, sir. It’s perfectly safe. I’ve got you.”
Nate snorted. “Yeah, that’s what you said the last time,” he said, meaninglessly, since he knew perfectly well Brad had never come to fairyland with him before.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the Brad-shape in front of him flinch. Nate felt guilty for some reason, even though he totally hadn’t poked or pinched him or anything, so he grabbed the water and drank it down, except the parts that fell out of the glass wrong.
“There,” he said, firmly, and belched.
“Excellent, sir. How about bed now?”
“Don’t be absurd, Brad-shaped person,” Nate said. “The bed has unass - unsack - Crap.” He tried again. “Un-ac-cep-ta-bly neg-a-tive con-no-ta-tions.” He enunciated each word carefully.
“I see.”
“Couch is for sleeping,” Nate explained. Really, this should be obvious.
“Couch it is, then.”
“Booyah,” Nate agreed absently, and glanced around. “Look at that, I’m already here. That’s convenient.”
“Indeed it is, sir.”
“‘Sir’,” Nate mocked. “I swear, you sound just like Brad.”
“Do you… do you miss him, Nate?”
“Brad?” Nate asked. He frowned, considering. “I don’t think ‘miss’ is the correct word.”
“What would be the correct word?”
“Um.” Nate concentrated, trying to put the words together right. “You know how when they cut your leg off, you can still feel the leg even though it isn’t there anymore? And it itches and hurts, but there’s no way to soothe it?”
There was a pause. “Yes, I - ” The other cleared his throat. “I’ve heard of that.”
“Whatever the word for that is, then,” Nate told him. There was no answer.
He sighed; talking about Brad made him sad. “I’m going to couch now,” he announced. “Before the water kicks in.”
He stretched himself out on the lovely, lovely couch, and let his eyes drift closed. The room was spinning a bit, he could tell, but as long as it stayed on the other side of his eyelids he was okay with that.
After a little bit, he felt something soft and blanket-like drift down over him, and he snuggled gratefully.
“Goodnight, Nate,” he heard someone say, but he was slipping into sleep too quickly to reply.
+
Nate was woken by his bladder informing him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t get to the toilet right now, he was going to have a very embarrassing accident.
Dammit. Nate lurched up off the couch and stumbled toward the bathroom. Something was odd, but he didn’t have time to note what it was. His head felt like someone was pounding it against an anvil, and his mouth tasted, if possible, even worse than the day before.
He made it to the toilet just in time, and pissed for what felt like thirty years, groaning his relief. He washed his hands arthritically afterward, leaning against the sink. He felt like he was about a thousand years old. After some consideration, he decided that as long as he was here, he might as well brush his teeth and try to get some of the diseased monkey shit taste out.
He was scrubbing his tongue with as much vigorousness as he could muster when his brain finally woke up enough to process what was wrong with the bathroom, which was that it was clean.
No, not just clean; spotless.
Nate lowered his toothbrush slowly, gazing around at the sparkling tile and gleaming porcelain. Even the bit of floor behind the toilet had been scrubbed clean. His glass shower door, which Nate had never managed to keep free of at least one layer of soap scum, was nearly hazardous in its crystal clear invisibility. The towels were fresh, too, and even his toiletries had been wiped off and arranged neatly on their shelf.
What the fuck, really.
Nate rinsed his mouth on autopilot, and then went back into the bedroom, which, he now saw, was also immaculate. Not only were all the clothes and books off the floor and the endtables cleared, someone had fucking vacuumed. The shelves and lampshades looked suspiciously like they had been dusted. The bed was made with fresh sheets, the quilt folded up in a neat square at the foot. The sheet corners were tucked with such tight, surgical precision that Nate bet he could bounce a quarter off the center of the bed.
He stared some more at the sheet corners. No, not surgical precision. Military precision.
Nate had always thought that expression about a person’s blood running cold was a hokey cliché, but he actually felt the icy wash along his veins now, enough to make him break out in goosebumps.
No. No, no, fuck no. That had been drunken dreaming bullshit, yesterday. That had not fucking happened.
But it had, and Nate knew it. Because he apparently had a cosmic “KICK ME” sign attached to his forehead for all the gods and fates to see.
Frankly, Nate thought they were exceeding their quota, these days.
Nate walked slowly back to the living room. Other than the blanket flung across the couch and a few faint, indelible stains on the carpet and upholstery, the room looked like it was ready to be put up for sale. No trace of the wreckage remained. The air smelled like Febreeze and coffee.
There was a soft clink from the kitchen, as of someone setting a glass down on the granite counter.
Nate swallowed and didn’t move for a moment. Then he told himself to man the fuck up already, and walked into the kitchen.
The kitchen was, unsurprisingly, also pristine. Brad sat at the far end of the island in the center, laptop open in front of him and mug of coffee at his elbow. He looked up when Nate entered, and for a moment their eyes met.
He was beautiful. Nate had forgotten how beautiful he was and not even realized it.
Brad looked away after only a moment, though, and went back to his laptop. “Good morning,” he said, expression perfectly neutral, and indicated where a second steaming mug, a glass of water, and Nate’s bottle of Advil sat in front of the stool around the corner from him.
Nate didn’t know what else to do, so he moved to the stool and sat down. He picked up the bottle, shook three pills into his hand, considered, and added one more before downing them quickly with water. He picked up the mug and sipped. As before, the coffee was perfectly prepared.
Brad appeared to be ignoring him, eyes still on his laptop screen. He sipped his coffee. Nate sipped his coffee. Brad clicked on something, and Nate resisted a sudden impulse to hurl the mug across the room, just to break up this strange Stepford parody of a domestic scene.
Nate considered and rejected about forty possible conversational openers, and finally in desperation resorted to simply stating the obvious.
“You cleaned my house,” he said. He hadn’t meant it to sound like anything, but it came out sounding like an accusation. Nate supposed it was one.
Brad was looking at him now, and his look seemed… cautious. He tilted his head, conceding that he had, indeed, cleaned Nate’s house. “I was given an order,” he said, and his lips twitched in something that was either amusement or irritation, or possibly both.
Nate didn’t get the joke. “An order?”
Brad lifted his laptop and turned it around, setting it in front of Nate. Nate looked at the screen, which had Brad’s Gmail account up on it, open to an email with two attachments. Nate looked at the text first:
So much for your precious situational awareness, you donkey cock. Now pull your thumb out, grow a pair, and get your goddamn braindead Viking ass out here and clean up your fucking mess.
Love and sloppy kisses,
Ray-Ray
Nate looked at the attachments. One was an electronic ticket in Brad’s name for a one-way flight from LAX to Nashville, and the other was the photo Ray had taken the day before, labeled “La Maison Fick”, with Nate’s address as the file name.
“He had no right,” Nate mumbled, still staring at the photo. It looked even worse on film than he remembered it looking in real life. Nate was dimly relieved that Ray had at least had the decency to make sure Nate himself hadn’t been in the picture, but that relief was obscured by his rising indignation over the entire stunt.
“I don’t think what he has a right to do has ever been much of a concern to Ray,” Brad remarked.
Nate reached out and closed the laptop, and picked up his mug again, looking over it at Brad. Brad gazed back at him steadily now, waiting for Nate to say… whatever he was going to say.
“So, this must have been a fun twenty-four hours for you,” Nate said, finally. “Flying nearly 3,000 miles to play housemaid for your drunkass former employer. Was it everything you dreamed it’d be?”
He hadn’t realized how angry he was until he heard the ugly, sarcastic tone of his own voice. How dare everyone just - invade him like this, decide that they all knew better than he did how to live his life?
“Nate - ”
“This is not your ‘fucking mess’, Brad,” Nate cut in. “It’s mine. I don’t care what Ray goddamn Person thinks, it’s not your job or your right to fix me. It wouldn’t be your job even if you hadn’t picked up and left without a fucking word three months ago. Your pity - ” Nate fairly spat the word, “ - is neither needed nor fucking appreciated!”
He was shouting by the end, and teetered on the brink of ordering Brad to get the fuck out of his house. Instead he shoved his stool back, not even caring that it fell over, and stormed out of the kitchen into the living room. He turned in a circle in the middle of the room, too angry to stay still, months’ worth of suppressed fury now on the boil.
Brad had followed him, and now stood in the entranceway dividing the kitchen from the living room, watching Nate with his goddamn blank I’m-feeling-nothing face on. Nate wanted to punch it. Mike Wynn had mentioned Brad’s nickname in the Marines when he’d first recommended him to Nate, and he decided it was the most fitting handle for a person Nate had ever heard in his life.
“So?” he demanded. “Explain yourself, Iceman, because I don’t get it. You don’t even give enough of a shit about me to quit your job to my face, but Ray sends you a picture of my dirty house and you’re on the next plane to scrub my goddamn toilet? What the fuck, Brad? I’m just - I don’t have the energy for this shit, okay? I have got more than enough to deal with without having to try and figure out what your fucking schizoid problem is. So either explain it to me, or - ”
He stopped, unwilling to finish the sentence. Even with how furious he was, he didn’t want Brad to leave. God, he was pathetic.
Brad’s stone face held for a moment, but then his jaw worked, and Nate saw him swallow. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for just a bit too long for it to be a blink. He looked like a man preparing to jump off a cliff.
Then he said, “I didn’t come here to try to fix you, Nate. Or to offer you pity. I came here to apologize. And to confess.”
Nate frowned. What the hell did that mean? He crossed his arms, indicating he was listening. But then his bad arm twinged, and he quickly dropped the stance. He tried to make it casual, but he saw Brad note his wince, and Brad’s mouth tightened.
“What happened to you was my fault, Nate,” he said. “I failed you, and for that I am more sorry than I can ever hope to say.”
Nate blinked. What? That was absurd. He opened his mouth, but Brad held up a hand, asking him to let him continue.
“My whole life,” he said, “in the Marines and after, my business has been to assess threats and respond to them accordingly. I am a Recon Marine, Nate; it is my job to see what no one else sees, to notice what everyone else misses. To stop bad things, before they happen. And I didn’t do that here. I failed.”
He shook his head, disgustedly. “I should have realized. I should have known that Walt was never the target, that you were. I even talked to you, the day it happened, about how it made no sense, but I didn’t follow through on my instincts until it was too late to keep you from getting hurt. You almost died, and when I saw you on the floor of that hallway - ”
He stopped, and swallowed again. “And that was the other way I failed. I lost - I do not let my emotions cloud my judgment, Nate. Or to affect my actions. Ever. But this time, I was - compromised. I left with Walt that night because I was convinced I was overreacting, that if it had been anyone other than you…”
He trailed off, gaze fixed somewhere past Nate’s right shoulder, as if seeing some very unpleasant vision on the wall behind him. Nate felt frozen in place. Was Brad saying - No. He couldn’t be.
Brad blinked, coming back to himself, and when he spoke again, it was with a seeming non sequitur. “I was engaged, once,” he said. “My high school sweetheart. She left me, and married my best friend from high school instead. Former best friend,” Brad amended. “I was deployed overseas when I found out.” He smiled, thinly. “Joint Dear John letter.”
Nate raised an eyebrow. He didn’t know where this story was going, but regardless, that was cold.
“That same day,” Brad continued, “I came within a hair’s breadth of snapping the neck of another Marine during a routine training drill. I told myself it was because he fucked up the protocols, because I was angry with him, but that wasn’t why. And right then and there I realized how I had let my feelings compromise me. How dangerous it was for me to - ” He shook his head. “It couldn’t be allowed. And I resolved that it would never happen again.”
He shifted to look Nate directly in the eye. “And it never did - until that night in the recording studio.”
Nate couldn’t breathe. He felt like all the air had suddenly left the room.
“I know how to incapacitate a man without killing him, Nate. I am very, very good at it. But that night - when I saw you, I thought you were dead. You were on the floor, and there was blood everywhere, and - And then that fucker looked at me, and fucking smirked, and asked me, ‘You here to save your filthy faggot lover?’ And I - ”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. Brad’s hands were clenched into fists, and his eyes…
Nate had understood, intellectually, how dangerous Brad could be. But the man currently in front of him was nothing even remotely like the cool, collected Iceman he’d known all this time, and Nate saw exactly why Brad had imposed such very tight controls on himself. This was a bit like what Nate imagined it was like to be in the same room as an uncaged tiger, and this was only at a memory.
But the only truly unnerving part of it is how Nate wasn’t afraid of him in the slightest. He could be frightened of dreams and of failure and of his own freshly discovered capacity for self-destruction, but of Brad Colbert, never.
Nate took a deep, slow breath, and watched as Brad methodically reeled himself in, stuffed that murderous rage back inside and sealed it up. Less than five seconds, and he was the Iceman again, hands relaxed, eyes calm. It was… impressive.
“After, I was - I didn’t know what to do. I shouldn’t have left the way I did, I know. It was deplorable, not having the courage to face you and ask forgiveness for what I did, to not stay and make amends. But to realize the - the depth of what I felt for you, to realize I could feel that way about anyone, much less another man…”
He shrugged, helplessly. “It’s no excuse to say I panicked, but I did. I had to get away. I thought, if I was far away, if I let it fade… And I assured myself that you didn’t feel anything for me, anyway.”
Nate’s eyes widened. What?
“I thought, surely if you had,” Brad said, “you would have shown it in some way. But you were always so - professional. And I - ”
Nate couldn’t help it; he threw back his head and laughed.
He laughed, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop.
He laughed for what felt like years, laughed until he was bent over and wheezing. He laughed, clutching his side at the stitch he’d given himself, and then he laughed some more. Even to his own ears, he sounded like he’d lost his mind.
“Oh, holy shit,” he gasped at last, wiping tears from his eyes. He staggered over to the couch and flopped down on it, still chuckling. Brad was still across the room, staring at him with an expression somewhere between outrage and alarm, and that sparked another bout of giggles from Nate.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nate wheezed. “But oh my God, Brad. Ray was so right. We really are the dumbest motherfuckers to ever walk this earth. Both of us.”
Brad opened his mouth, looking like he was considering getting seriously pissed off, but Nate just kept snickering. “You really thought,” he said, pausing every other word for a snort of laughter, “that I - didn’t want - oh, Jesus, that’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard.” He grinned at Brad like a maniac. “I wanted to jump your bones from the second I laid eyes on you, you moron.”
He hiccupped. “Professional,” he repeated self-mockingly, and went off on a fresh jag of snorts and chuckles.
Brad stood there, clearly trying to maintain his indignation, and failing. After a long moment his lips twitched up, reluctantly, into a wry half-smile.
He huffed out a breath and walked over to the couch. “You certainly know how to kill a moment, Fick,” he grumbled. “I bare my soul to you, and you laugh?”
Nate beamed up at him, and Brad’s smile widened in response, seemingly against his will. “That smile,” he murmured, blue eyes gazing fondly down. He shook his head and sat down, right next to Nate so their hips pressed together. Nate leaned his head against Brad’s arm, and after a moment Brad swung his arm behind them to wrap it around Nate’s shoulders, so his head rested on Brad’s chest instead.
Nate let out a long sigh, feeling his mirth drain from him, but also his tension and stress and the last vestiges of his anger. Nothing in his life had ever felt more right than having Brad’s arm around him.
“What a pair we are,” he murmured, and Brad’s arm tightened around him in agreement.
“You don’t owe me an apology, Brad,” Nate told him. “Well, no, you do owe me an apology for fucking off without talking to me first, but you most definitely do not owe me one for anything else. And you certainly did not ‘fail’ me. If it had been anyone else on the job, I would be dead right now, so you’ll forgive me if I consider your involvement to be firmly in the ‘win’ column. You will stop beating yourself up for not being superhuman. Agreed?”
Brad looked down at Nate. “I’m sorry I fucked off without talking to you first. As for the other…” He drew a breath. “I’ll agree, if you agree that we are going to have a talk at some point about why exactly you’re trying to give yourself liver failure before you hit thirty. Yes?”
Nate grimaced, but it wasn’t like he had a leg to stand on, here. “Fine,” he muttered. He rubbed his cheek against Brad’s shirt, glorying in the physical contact. He felt like it had been centuries since someone had really touched him. Brad’s hand squeezed his shoulder, massaging it gently, and Nate felt a warm ribbon of feeling uncoil somewhere in his gut.
He tilted his head back so he could see Brad’s face, so close to his own. “Yeah, we’ll talk about that,” Nate told him. “At some point.”
“Good.” The hand was moving up and down now, stroking his arm. The air felt different, like it was being slowly charged with electricity. Nate restrained a shiver, and it wasn’t because he was cold.
He decided that as long as Brad had been so honest with him, he should be too. “Just so you know,” Nate said, “I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with you.”
Brad’s hand stopped moving.
Nate tried not to freak out, forced himself to keep going. “I just thought I should tell you, because… And I’m not asking - it’s okay if you don’t - ”
He was cut off by Brad’s lips descending over his, sealing them together.
Nate gasped reflexively, lips parting, and Brad’s tongue slipped between them, tasting like coffee and something Nate knew instinctively was just Brad. The groan that escaped him then was entirely involuntary, and he returned the kiss in kind.
Their tongues tangled together as Nate sank back on the couch, drawing Brad with him, twisting one leg between them until he could push it behind Brad so that Brad’s body rested in the vee of his legs. Brad surged forward, seeking a deeper kiss, and Nate let out an “Ah!” as Brad brushed against his cock, rubbing it against his boxers.
Peripherally, Nate was slightly dismayed to realize he’d been in nothing but boxers and a T-shirt the entire time Brad had been here, and had never even noticed until now. But then again, at this point it was just less to take off.
Brad was backing off, though, breaking the kiss to stare curiously down at Nate’s crotch, and Nate abruptly remembered. “You’ve never done this with a man, have you?” Nate asked.
Brad shook his head, and Nate expected him to draw back, but instead Brad pulled in his hand from where he’d had it resting on Nate’s shoulder, and placed it almost delicately over the bulge in Nate’s boxers, pressing lightly. Nate’s head fell back and he moaned, thrusting up into Brad’s hand without volition.
“Oh God,” he rasped, hips undulating, and he opened his eyes to find Brad’s on his face, pupils blown hot as he watched Nate’s reaction to his touch.
“You like that,” Brad said, and the wonderment in his voice was almost more arousing than his hand now rubbing gentle circles on the cloth over Nate’s dick.
“Yeah,” Nate agreed, huskily. “Oh, Jesus, yeah.”
Brad hesitated, then moved to grab the waistband of Nate’s boxers. Nate lifted his hips, and Brad slid the boxers down and then off his legs. Nate’s cock bobbed free, already most of the way to hard, and Brad stared at it in frank fascination, still hovering over Nate’s body. Nate held himself still, letting Brad look his fill and get used to the idea, even though it was kind of killing him to have those unbelievably blue eyes on him and yet have no corresponding touch on his skin.
“This, too,” Brad said, tugging at the bottom of Nate’s T-shirt. Nate tilted his upper body up just enough to pull the shirt off one-handed and toss it somewhere before laying back down, fully naked now. Brad’s gaze ran up and down the length of Nate’s body, and the appreciation he saw there encouraged Nate’s dick to full hardness. Brad noticed, and licked his lips, but still didn’t move for a long moment. Nate tried not to expire on the spot from anticipation.
Finally, though, Brad reached down and gently grasped Nate’s cock, watching Nate’s face. Nate inhaled sharply, and Brad smiled a bit before his gaze returned to his hand, his air that of intense concentration as he moved it lightly up once, then down along the shaft. Nate could practically see Brad working out in his head the angle and method of jacking someone else’s dick, as opposed to his own, and found it worryingly adorable. Christ, he was really head over fucking heels, wasn’t he?
Then coherent thoughts fled as Brad abruptly released him to spit once, twice in his hand, and then began stroking him with intent, hard and slow. Nate’s back arched and his mouth fell open in panting, bone-deep grunts.
“Brad - ah - God,” he gasped, and then Brad’s lips were pressing into his and his tongue sweeping into his mouth, hand never pausing in its pumping rhythm, and Nate whined wordlessly into Brad’s mouth as sensation pulsed through him in waves, drawing in, bearing down.
“So beautiful,” Brad whispered against his lips, and Nate let out a hoarse cry and came all over Brad’s hand and his own stomach.
Brad jacked him a few more times, milking the rest of his come out of him, until Nate made a protesting noise and pushed at his hand weakly. “Too much,” he rasped, and Brad let him go, seeming reluctant. Nate slumped, his breathing harsh and ragged.
Brad nosed at his neck, nuzzling him while Nate came down from his orgasm, not seeming to care that he was getting Nate’s come all over his shirt. “Good?” he murmured, pulling back to look Nate in the eye.
Nate gave him an incredulous look. “Are you kidding?” he asked, voice still scratchy. Brad grinned rather proudly and leaned in for a slow, lazy kiss.
Eventually Nate decided he could move again, and broke the kiss to reverse their positions, moving Brad up and back so that Nate was on top now. Brad was still fully clothed, wearing a button-down shirt and jeans and even shoes, Nate noted with disapproval. That would never do.
Brad lay back and watched as Nate began to unbutton his shirt. To his humiliation, however, his bad hand proved to be unequal to the task. Nate felt his state of happy post-orgasm fading, to be replaced by frustration, the third time his hand slipped trying to push the second button through its hole. Dammit.
Then Brad’s hands closed over his, squeezing them tightly for a moment before moving them gently aside so he could undo the buttons himself. Then he reached up and grasped the back of Nate’s neck, pulling him down for a thorough, sloppy, brain-melting kiss, reminding him of why they were here. By the time Brad broke off, Nate was panting again, frustration forgotten. Brad smiled at him, and Nate grinned back, heart clenching a little bit.
Returning his attention to Brad’s shirt, Nate pushed it open to reveal a superbly muscled torso, the kind that only came with serious dedication to staying in shape. Nate ran his hands appreciatively over the ridges and grooves of Brad’s abdominals and pectoral muscles. He’d never had a better reason to be glad that his left hand had regained nearly all its sensory capability, even if the muscle control was less than stellar.
Nate leaned down to lick each nipple, smile turning wicked at Brad’s involuntary jerk and grunt at the touch. He brushed lower, trailing his hands to dip into the waistband of Brad’s jeans, and then back outside to roam down, just missing Brad’s groin to grip his thighs briefly, stroking. Brad gave him a dirty look.
“Tease,” he accused. Nate just grinned some more, and kept going, scooting backwards to allow his palms to travel the considerable length of Brad’s legs to his feet, where Nate disposed of Brad’s shoes and socks as quickly as he could considering he was using just one hand.
Then he climbed back up Brad’s body to claim his mouth for another kiss. Their tongues slipped and slid together lazily, and Nate used the time to push and maneuver Brad’s shirt off his arms, though he was hindered by Brad’s insistence on running his hands up and down the expanse of Nate’s back, and then down to grip Nate’s ass firmly in both hands. Nate gasped into Brad’s mouth as the move ground his sensitive, spent cock into the denim of Brad’s jeans. Brad bucked up with a moan of his own, and to his amazement Nate could feel his own dick twitching slightly in renewed interest already. Jesus.
“Okay, jeans off now,” Nate said, and moved back so Brad could take care of it. If Nate’s hand wasn’t up to undoing a shirt, button-fly jeans were out of the question.
Brad didn’t move for a moment, and Nate glanced up to see him watching Nate with an odd, intent gaze. Nate raised his eyebrows in inquiry, impatient at the delay, and Brad moved then, unbuttoning his jeans and shoving them off his legs with much more satisfactory haste.
Brad turned out to be a briefs man. Nate kicked Brad’s jeans off the couch and bent down to breathe hotly onto the cloth directly over Brad’s cock.
“Fuck,” Brad said harshly.
“Exactly,” Nate replied, and rubbed his face over Brad’s crotch a few times, feeling the length inside harden. Then he pushed Brad’s legs apart and crawled back up between them, holding Brad’s gaze as he slid his body up until their cocks aligned, Brad’s still covered in cotton. He ground down on Brad, sliding his right hand behind Brad’s neck to pull him up into a filthy open-mouthed kiss. Brad made incoherent noises as Nate plundered his mouth and rocked back and forth over his cock relentlessly.
When they finally came up for air, Brad stared at Nate in something of a daze. “You toppy little fucker,” he breathed.
Nate gave him a mock-affronted look. “Who, me?” he said, and ducked down, mouthing over Brad’s neck. He let his good hand travel down the length of Brad’s body until he reached the waistband of Brad’s briefs, and skimmed just underneath, so close and not touching - yet. He enjoyed how Brad’s hips moved seemingly of their own accord, seeking contact and not finding it. One of Brad’s hands came up, but Nate batted it away, moving his mouth down to pay close attention to Brad’s nipples while his hand rubbed and circled beneath Brad’s underwear, just missing Brad’s cock every time.
“Ah, God - Jesus, Nate,” Brad said, half complaining, half just wrecked. He arched up as Nate laved his nipple lovingly over and over with his tongue.
“I,” Nate said, punctuating his words with more licks and nuzzles, “am not toppy at all.” He still hadn’t touched Brad’s cock, instead scratching lightly at the hair surrounding it, dipping into the creases where Brad’s thighs met his groin, brushing his balls ever so slightly.
Brad sucked in a breath. “You’re a fucking liar, is what you are,” Brad answered, huskily, hips shifting restlessly. Nate noted he made no move to reassert control, though. Interesting.
Nate pulled his hand out of Brad’s underwear and braced himself over Brad’s body with his knees and his right hand, looking into Brad’s eyes. “I’m going to suck your cock now,” he told him very seriously. “Unless you have any objections, of course.”
Brad gazed back, unwavering. “No objections here,” and he paused, “sir.”
Damn. So that’s the game they were playing; possibly, the one Brad had been playing privately all along. Nate felt a jolt of lust course through him. Brad, it seemed, had hidden kinky depths.
“Good,” Nate answered him. He smiled slowly, making sure it was predatory, and leaned forward to lick a stripe across Brad’s lips before ducking down to settle himself between Brad’s legs. He reached up to grasp Brad’s briefs and pulled them down, at last freeing Brad’s cock.
It was just as beautiful as the rest of him, and gloriously erect, curving up toward Brad’s stomach. Nate took a moment just to appreciate the sight before moving to rub his lips lightly along the shaft, enjoying the slip of velvety skin over rock-hard flesh.
Brad’s entire lower body tried to arch up, but Nate was done with teasing, so he weighted Brad’s hips down with his right arm, and swallowed his cock down in one long smooth slide.
“Oh shit God yes,” Brad groaned.
Then he lost words completely as Nate blew him fast and hard, using every trick he knew to take Brad apart. Brad moaned and shook and tried to thrust up, but Nate held him down and suckled relentlessly, using lips and tongue and just a hint of teeth. It wasn’t very long at all before Nate felt a hand in his hair, warning him that Brad was going to come, but he ignored it, and moments later Brad gave a ragged shout and spent into Nate’s mouth, and Nate swallowed it all down, every drop.
+
At some point they’d relocated from the couch to the bed, where Brad had given Nate a sloppy, messy, and distinctly inexpert blowjob. Nate had been so turned on, though, by the notion of being the first Brad had done this for, that he’d come again almost immediately.
Now, they tangled together in the wreckage of the bedclothes, smelling of sex and sweat and more sex. Nate couldn’t say exactly how many hours later it was, but the sun was low in the west, slanting in through his bedroom windows, and Nate was pretty sure he’d woken up sometime in the morning. So, quite a while, to say the least. Nate had dozed, on and off, but Brad was out like a light, and had been for a while. Which was only fair; he’d gotten a hell of a lot less sleep in the last day than Nate had.
Nate, for his part, was content to lay now with his head pillowed in the crook of Brad’s shoulder and listen to Brad’s deep, slow breaths, feel the warmth of the long, lean body next to his. He felt loose and easy for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, like he’d had a wire strung somewhere inside him that had been twisting slowly tighter and tighter, and then it had gone suddenly slack and fallen away.
It was wonderful. Nate didn’t kid himself that everything was going to be hunky-dory from here on out, but for the first time he was able to think that things could get better. He hadn’t even noticed until now that he hadn’t really believed that was possible. Jesus, no wonder he’d been… the way he’d been.
Eventually Nate realized that he was ravenous, and gently freed himself from Brad’s rather octopus-like tangle of arms and legs to slide quietly out of bed, leaning over to lay a soft kiss to Brad’s forehead before heading to the kitchen to scrounge up something to eat. He was munching his way through a giant bowl of Cheerios when the doorbell rang.
Nate glanced down at what he was wearing - a pair of ancient cotton pajama bottoms and nothing else - and sighed. Apparently everyone was going to get to see him en déshabillé these days.
He opened the door to find Walt on the other side, arms crossed and with a determined expression on his face.
“Walt!” Nate said, sounding sheepish even to his own ears. “Um. Hi.”
Walt raised an eloquent eyebrow, and looked Nate up and down closely. Nate saw his eyes pause on Nate’s neck, which Nate realized now sported at least two very impressive hickeys, and tried unsuccessfully not to flush with embarrassment.
“Hi,” Walt said at last, and without further ado brushed past Nate and inside. Feeling rather like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Nate followed.
They reached the living room just as Brad entered from the bedroom side, looking even more disheveled than Nate, eyes heavy-lidded. Nate was grateful he’d put his jeans back on, at least, even if they weren’t buttoned, but it could not have been more obvious what the two of them had been doing than if they’d staged the scene.
“Walt,” Brad said, in greeting perhaps, but it was hard to tell. Nate found a moment to be impressed that Brad could pull off his blank-faced Iceman act even when still half-asleep.
“Brad,” Walt answered, flatly, and then walked up to Brad and punched him in the face.
Part Four
Part One
Part Two
After recovering a bit from his hangover, not to mention the capricious depredations of Hurricane Ray, Nate eventually decided to take his advice on the shower, though not the part about the maid. Or the part about burning his house down, because even in his current state Nate wasn’t emo enough for that.
Instead he cleaned the place himself, slowly. He didn’t nearly get to everything, but he cleared off the coffee table and picked up the worst of the trash, and if the dishes weren’t washed, at least they were now all in the kitchen. It was as good a way as any to pass the time if he wasn’t going to the store to get more bourbon.
And he wasn’t, yet.
In a supremely fucked-up way, Ray’s promise to return, bizarro!Terminator-like as it was, had given Nate something to look forward to. Even if Ray showed up escorting guys with butterfly nets to take him to the loony bin (which Nate thought was probably a little over-the-top even for Ray), it would at least be different. Maybe something worth staying sober for, even.
Most likely, though, Ray had just lied through his teeth about not saying anything to Walt, and Nate was going to find a posse composed of Ray, Walt, Rudy, his mother, his second-grade English teacher, and fucking Dr. Phil camped on his doorstep, all just itching for an intervention.
Well, whatever. He’d always wanted a chance to tell Dr. Phil that he was full of shit.
+
The man was coming for him in the hallway.
Nate panted and scrabbled against the shadowed air, but it held him like a fly in amber, trapping his feet, squeezing his lungs. He couldn’t move, and the man was coming for him.
Panic screamed across his nerves, but the jellied air oozed down his throat, and he couldn’t scream aloud. He couldn’t make a sound, and the man was coming for him.
He didn’t want to see the man, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away. And the man reached him, and smiled, and the bat came down and Nate saw it was going to smash in his face -
Nate lunged awake in his bed, shaking and drenched in sweat, and lurched into the bathroom just in time. He vomited noisily in the toilet, and afterwards he clutched himself to it for a moment, resting his cheek against the cool porcelain.
Now we remember why we don’t go to bed sober, don’t we, Nathaniel?
Nate waited until the shaking had subsided enough for him to stand, and then went back into his bedroom and started pulling on clothes. There was a 24-hour liquor store a mile from here.
Fuck Ray. If he wanted to have an intervention, Nate might as well give him his money’s worth.
+
Brad was standing in the doorway.
Well, a Brad-shaped figure was, anyway. Because it couldn’t actually be Brad. That was absurd.
Nate blinked, and squinted against the way-too-fucking-bright sunlight streaming in past the hypothetically-Brad-shaped person on his porch. When had he answered the door? Maybe this meant he’d finally destroyed all his brain cells and was now having alcohol-induced hallucinations. Pretty impressive for a mere one-month bender; Nate was obscurely proud of himself.
“Nate?”
“It’s supposed to take years,” he told the Brad-shape, “but here you are already!” He frowned. “No pink elephants, though. I distinctly recall that I was promised pink elephants. Maybe they come later.”
He waved it away, and headed back to the living room, peripherally aware that the Brad-shape was following him. He needed to sit down, only the coffee table jumped in the way. “Insolent,” he muttered, as the Brad-shape grabbed him just in time to keep him upright.
“Unhand me, specter!” he declaimed, and giggled, shoving his bad hand in the Brad-shape’s face. “Unhand, get it? ‘S funny. Like Shakespeare.”
“Hilarious, sir. Maybe you should sit down.”
“Amazing, you even sound like him,” Nate said dreamily, as he magnanimously allowed himself to be lowered onto the couch. “Magnanimous is a good word,” he informed the Brad-shape. “It means ‘lofty and kinglike’. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“I did know that, actually.”
“Liar,” Nate accused, and then laughed to show he didn’t mean it. There was no need to be mean, after all.
Nate lost track of things for a moment, and then the Brad-shape was offering him a glass of water.
“Here, Nate. Drink.”
“Uh-uh,” he refused. “If you eat or drink in the fairies’ land, you can never go back to the real world. I’m here strictly on a time-share basis.”
He thought he heard a sigh. “The fairies are making an exception in this case, sir. It’s perfectly safe. I’ve got you.”
Nate snorted. “Yeah, that’s what you said the last time,” he said, meaninglessly, since he knew perfectly well Brad had never come to fairyland with him before.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw the Brad-shape in front of him flinch. Nate felt guilty for some reason, even though he totally hadn’t poked or pinched him or anything, so he grabbed the water and drank it down, except the parts that fell out of the glass wrong.
“There,” he said, firmly, and belched.
“Excellent, sir. How about bed now?”
“Don’t be absurd, Brad-shaped person,” Nate said. “The bed has unass - unsack - Crap.” He tried again. “Un-ac-cep-ta-bly neg-a-tive con-no-ta-tions.” He enunciated each word carefully.
“I see.”
“Couch is for sleeping,” Nate explained. Really, this should be obvious.
“Couch it is, then.”
“Booyah,” Nate agreed absently, and glanced around. “Look at that, I’m already here. That’s convenient.”
“Indeed it is, sir.”
“‘Sir’,” Nate mocked. “I swear, you sound just like Brad.”
“Do you… do you miss him, Nate?”
“Brad?” Nate asked. He frowned, considering. “I don’t think ‘miss’ is the correct word.”
“What would be the correct word?”
“Um.” Nate concentrated, trying to put the words together right. “You know how when they cut your leg off, you can still feel the leg even though it isn’t there anymore? And it itches and hurts, but there’s no way to soothe it?”
There was a pause. “Yes, I - ” The other cleared his throat. “I’ve heard of that.”
“Whatever the word for that is, then,” Nate told him. There was no answer.
He sighed; talking about Brad made him sad. “I’m going to couch now,” he announced. “Before the water kicks in.”
He stretched himself out on the lovely, lovely couch, and let his eyes drift closed. The room was spinning a bit, he could tell, but as long as it stayed on the other side of his eyelids he was okay with that.
After a little bit, he felt something soft and blanket-like drift down over him, and he snuggled gratefully.
“Goodnight, Nate,” he heard someone say, but he was slipping into sleep too quickly to reply.
+
Nate was woken by his bladder informing him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t get to the toilet right now, he was going to have a very embarrassing accident.
Dammit. Nate lurched up off the couch and stumbled toward the bathroom. Something was odd, but he didn’t have time to note what it was. His head felt like someone was pounding it against an anvil, and his mouth tasted, if possible, even worse than the day before.
He made it to the toilet just in time, and pissed for what felt like thirty years, groaning his relief. He washed his hands arthritically afterward, leaning against the sink. He felt like he was about a thousand years old. After some consideration, he decided that as long as he was here, he might as well brush his teeth and try to get some of the diseased monkey shit taste out.
He was scrubbing his tongue with as much vigorousness as he could muster when his brain finally woke up enough to process what was wrong with the bathroom, which was that it was clean.
No, not just clean; spotless.
Nate lowered his toothbrush slowly, gazing around at the sparkling tile and gleaming porcelain. Even the bit of floor behind the toilet had been scrubbed clean. His glass shower door, which Nate had never managed to keep free of at least one layer of soap scum, was nearly hazardous in its crystal clear invisibility. The towels were fresh, too, and even his toiletries had been wiped off and arranged neatly on their shelf.
What the fuck, really.
Nate rinsed his mouth on autopilot, and then went back into the bedroom, which, he now saw, was also immaculate. Not only were all the clothes and books off the floor and the endtables cleared, someone had fucking vacuumed. The shelves and lampshades looked suspiciously like they had been dusted. The bed was made with fresh sheets, the quilt folded up in a neat square at the foot. The sheet corners were tucked with such tight, surgical precision that Nate bet he could bounce a quarter off the center of the bed.
He stared some more at the sheet corners. No, not surgical precision. Military precision.
Nate had always thought that expression about a person’s blood running cold was a hokey cliché, but he actually felt the icy wash along his veins now, enough to make him break out in goosebumps.
No. No, no, fuck no. That had been drunken dreaming bullshit, yesterday. That had not fucking happened.
But it had, and Nate knew it. Because he apparently had a cosmic “KICK ME” sign attached to his forehead for all the gods and fates to see.
Frankly, Nate thought they were exceeding their quota, these days.
Nate walked slowly back to the living room. Other than the blanket flung across the couch and a few faint, indelible stains on the carpet and upholstery, the room looked like it was ready to be put up for sale. No trace of the wreckage remained. The air smelled like Febreeze and coffee.
There was a soft clink from the kitchen, as of someone setting a glass down on the granite counter.
Nate swallowed and didn’t move for a moment. Then he told himself to man the fuck up already, and walked into the kitchen.
The kitchen was, unsurprisingly, also pristine. Brad sat at the far end of the island in the center, laptop open in front of him and mug of coffee at his elbow. He looked up when Nate entered, and for a moment their eyes met.
He was beautiful. Nate had forgotten how beautiful he was and not even realized it.
Brad looked away after only a moment, though, and went back to his laptop. “Good morning,” he said, expression perfectly neutral, and indicated where a second steaming mug, a glass of water, and Nate’s bottle of Advil sat in front of the stool around the corner from him.
Nate didn’t know what else to do, so he moved to the stool and sat down. He picked up the bottle, shook three pills into his hand, considered, and added one more before downing them quickly with water. He picked up the mug and sipped. As before, the coffee was perfectly prepared.
Brad appeared to be ignoring him, eyes still on his laptop screen. He sipped his coffee. Nate sipped his coffee. Brad clicked on something, and Nate resisted a sudden impulse to hurl the mug across the room, just to break up this strange Stepford parody of a domestic scene.
Nate considered and rejected about forty possible conversational openers, and finally in desperation resorted to simply stating the obvious.
“You cleaned my house,” he said. He hadn’t meant it to sound like anything, but it came out sounding like an accusation. Nate supposed it was one.
Brad was looking at him now, and his look seemed… cautious. He tilted his head, conceding that he had, indeed, cleaned Nate’s house. “I was given an order,” he said, and his lips twitched in something that was either amusement or irritation, or possibly both.
Nate didn’t get the joke. “An order?”
Brad lifted his laptop and turned it around, setting it in front of Nate. Nate looked at the screen, which had Brad’s Gmail account up on it, open to an email with two attachments. Nate looked at the text first:
So much for your precious situational awareness, you donkey cock. Now pull your thumb out, grow a pair, and get your goddamn braindead Viking ass out here and clean up your fucking mess.
Love and sloppy kisses,
Ray-Ray
Nate looked at the attachments. One was an electronic ticket in Brad’s name for a one-way flight from LAX to Nashville, and the other was the photo Ray had taken the day before, labeled “La Maison Fick”, with Nate’s address as the file name.
“He had no right,” Nate mumbled, still staring at the photo. It looked even worse on film than he remembered it looking in real life. Nate was dimly relieved that Ray had at least had the decency to make sure Nate himself hadn’t been in the picture, but that relief was obscured by his rising indignation over the entire stunt.
“I don’t think what he has a right to do has ever been much of a concern to Ray,” Brad remarked.
Nate reached out and closed the laptop, and picked up his mug again, looking over it at Brad. Brad gazed back at him steadily now, waiting for Nate to say… whatever he was going to say.
“So, this must have been a fun twenty-four hours for you,” Nate said, finally. “Flying nearly 3,000 miles to play housemaid for your drunkass former employer. Was it everything you dreamed it’d be?”
He hadn’t realized how angry he was until he heard the ugly, sarcastic tone of his own voice. How dare everyone just - invade him like this, decide that they all knew better than he did how to live his life?
“Nate - ”
“This is not your ‘fucking mess’, Brad,” Nate cut in. “It’s mine. I don’t care what Ray goddamn Person thinks, it’s not your job or your right to fix me. It wouldn’t be your job even if you hadn’t picked up and left without a fucking word three months ago. Your pity - ” Nate fairly spat the word, “ - is neither needed nor fucking appreciated!”
He was shouting by the end, and teetered on the brink of ordering Brad to get the fuck out of his house. Instead he shoved his stool back, not even caring that it fell over, and stormed out of the kitchen into the living room. He turned in a circle in the middle of the room, too angry to stay still, months’ worth of suppressed fury now on the boil.
Brad had followed him, and now stood in the entranceway dividing the kitchen from the living room, watching Nate with his goddamn blank I’m-feeling-nothing face on. Nate wanted to punch it. Mike Wynn had mentioned Brad’s nickname in the Marines when he’d first recommended him to Nate, and he decided it was the most fitting handle for a person Nate had ever heard in his life.
“So?” he demanded. “Explain yourself, Iceman, because I don’t get it. You don’t even give enough of a shit about me to quit your job to my face, but Ray sends you a picture of my dirty house and you’re on the next plane to scrub my goddamn toilet? What the fuck, Brad? I’m just - I don’t have the energy for this shit, okay? I have got more than enough to deal with without having to try and figure out what your fucking schizoid problem is. So either explain it to me, or - ”
He stopped, unwilling to finish the sentence. Even with how furious he was, he didn’t want Brad to leave. God, he was pathetic.
Brad’s stone face held for a moment, but then his jaw worked, and Nate saw him swallow. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for just a bit too long for it to be a blink. He looked like a man preparing to jump off a cliff.
Then he said, “I didn’t come here to try to fix you, Nate. Or to offer you pity. I came here to apologize. And to confess.”
Nate frowned. What the hell did that mean? He crossed his arms, indicating he was listening. But then his bad arm twinged, and he quickly dropped the stance. He tried to make it casual, but he saw Brad note his wince, and Brad’s mouth tightened.
“What happened to you was my fault, Nate,” he said. “I failed you, and for that I am more sorry than I can ever hope to say.”
Nate blinked. What? That was absurd. He opened his mouth, but Brad held up a hand, asking him to let him continue.
“My whole life,” he said, “in the Marines and after, my business has been to assess threats and respond to them accordingly. I am a Recon Marine, Nate; it is my job to see what no one else sees, to notice what everyone else misses. To stop bad things, before they happen. And I didn’t do that here. I failed.”
He shook his head, disgustedly. “I should have realized. I should have known that Walt was never the target, that you were. I even talked to you, the day it happened, about how it made no sense, but I didn’t follow through on my instincts until it was too late to keep you from getting hurt. You almost died, and when I saw you on the floor of that hallway - ”
He stopped, and swallowed again. “And that was the other way I failed. I lost - I do not let my emotions cloud my judgment, Nate. Or to affect my actions. Ever. But this time, I was - compromised. I left with Walt that night because I was convinced I was overreacting, that if it had been anyone other than you…”
He trailed off, gaze fixed somewhere past Nate’s right shoulder, as if seeing some very unpleasant vision on the wall behind him. Nate felt frozen in place. Was Brad saying - No. He couldn’t be.
Brad blinked, coming back to himself, and when he spoke again, it was with a seeming non sequitur. “I was engaged, once,” he said. “My high school sweetheart. She left me, and married my best friend from high school instead. Former best friend,” Brad amended. “I was deployed overseas when I found out.” He smiled, thinly. “Joint Dear John letter.”
Nate raised an eyebrow. He didn’t know where this story was going, but regardless, that was cold.
“That same day,” Brad continued, “I came within a hair’s breadth of snapping the neck of another Marine during a routine training drill. I told myself it was because he fucked up the protocols, because I was angry with him, but that wasn’t why. And right then and there I realized how I had let my feelings compromise me. How dangerous it was for me to - ” He shook his head. “It couldn’t be allowed. And I resolved that it would never happen again.”
He shifted to look Nate directly in the eye. “And it never did - until that night in the recording studio.”
Nate couldn’t breathe. He felt like all the air had suddenly left the room.
“I know how to incapacitate a man without killing him, Nate. I am very, very good at it. But that night - when I saw you, I thought you were dead. You were on the floor, and there was blood everywhere, and - And then that fucker looked at me, and fucking smirked, and asked me, ‘You here to save your filthy faggot lover?’ And I - ”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. Brad’s hands were clenched into fists, and his eyes…
Nate had understood, intellectually, how dangerous Brad could be. But the man currently in front of him was nothing even remotely like the cool, collected Iceman he’d known all this time, and Nate saw exactly why Brad had imposed such very tight controls on himself. This was a bit like what Nate imagined it was like to be in the same room as an uncaged tiger, and this was only at a memory.
But the only truly unnerving part of it is how Nate wasn’t afraid of him in the slightest. He could be frightened of dreams and of failure and of his own freshly discovered capacity for self-destruction, but of Brad Colbert, never.
Nate took a deep, slow breath, and watched as Brad methodically reeled himself in, stuffed that murderous rage back inside and sealed it up. Less than five seconds, and he was the Iceman again, hands relaxed, eyes calm. It was… impressive.
“After, I was - I didn’t know what to do. I shouldn’t have left the way I did, I know. It was deplorable, not having the courage to face you and ask forgiveness for what I did, to not stay and make amends. But to realize the - the depth of what I felt for you, to realize I could feel that way about anyone, much less another man…”
He shrugged, helplessly. “It’s no excuse to say I panicked, but I did. I had to get away. I thought, if I was far away, if I let it fade… And I assured myself that you didn’t feel anything for me, anyway.”
Nate’s eyes widened. What?
“I thought, surely if you had,” Brad said, “you would have shown it in some way. But you were always so - professional. And I - ”
Nate couldn’t help it; he threw back his head and laughed.
He laughed, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop.
He laughed for what felt like years, laughed until he was bent over and wheezing. He laughed, clutching his side at the stitch he’d given himself, and then he laughed some more. Even to his own ears, he sounded like he’d lost his mind.
“Oh, holy shit,” he gasped at last, wiping tears from his eyes. He staggered over to the couch and flopped down on it, still chuckling. Brad was still across the room, staring at him with an expression somewhere between outrage and alarm, and that sparked another bout of giggles from Nate.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nate wheezed. “But oh my God, Brad. Ray was so right. We really are the dumbest motherfuckers to ever walk this earth. Both of us.”
Brad opened his mouth, looking like he was considering getting seriously pissed off, but Nate just kept snickering. “You really thought,” he said, pausing every other word for a snort of laughter, “that I - didn’t want - oh, Jesus, that’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard.” He grinned at Brad like a maniac. “I wanted to jump your bones from the second I laid eyes on you, you moron.”
He hiccupped. “Professional,” he repeated self-mockingly, and went off on a fresh jag of snorts and chuckles.
Brad stood there, clearly trying to maintain his indignation, and failing. After a long moment his lips twitched up, reluctantly, into a wry half-smile.
He huffed out a breath and walked over to the couch. “You certainly know how to kill a moment, Fick,” he grumbled. “I bare my soul to you, and you laugh?”
Nate beamed up at him, and Brad’s smile widened in response, seemingly against his will. “That smile,” he murmured, blue eyes gazing fondly down. He shook his head and sat down, right next to Nate so their hips pressed together. Nate leaned his head against Brad’s arm, and after a moment Brad swung his arm behind them to wrap it around Nate’s shoulders, so his head rested on Brad’s chest instead.
Nate let out a long sigh, feeling his mirth drain from him, but also his tension and stress and the last vestiges of his anger. Nothing in his life had ever felt more right than having Brad’s arm around him.
“What a pair we are,” he murmured, and Brad’s arm tightened around him in agreement.
“You don’t owe me an apology, Brad,” Nate told him. “Well, no, you do owe me an apology for fucking off without talking to me first, but you most definitely do not owe me one for anything else. And you certainly did not ‘fail’ me. If it had been anyone else on the job, I would be dead right now, so you’ll forgive me if I consider your involvement to be firmly in the ‘win’ column. You will stop beating yourself up for not being superhuman. Agreed?”
Brad looked down at Nate. “I’m sorry I fucked off without talking to you first. As for the other…” He drew a breath. “I’ll agree, if you agree that we are going to have a talk at some point about why exactly you’re trying to give yourself liver failure before you hit thirty. Yes?”
Nate grimaced, but it wasn’t like he had a leg to stand on, here. “Fine,” he muttered. He rubbed his cheek against Brad’s shirt, glorying in the physical contact. He felt like it had been centuries since someone had really touched him. Brad’s hand squeezed his shoulder, massaging it gently, and Nate felt a warm ribbon of feeling uncoil somewhere in his gut.
He tilted his head back so he could see Brad’s face, so close to his own. “Yeah, we’ll talk about that,” Nate told him. “At some point.”
“Good.” The hand was moving up and down now, stroking his arm. The air felt different, like it was being slowly charged with electricity. Nate restrained a shiver, and it wasn’t because he was cold.
He decided that as long as Brad had been so honest with him, he should be too. “Just so you know,” Nate said, “I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with you.”
Brad’s hand stopped moving.
Nate tried not to freak out, forced himself to keep going. “I just thought I should tell you, because… And I’m not asking - it’s okay if you don’t - ”
He was cut off by Brad’s lips descending over his, sealing them together.
Nate gasped reflexively, lips parting, and Brad’s tongue slipped between them, tasting like coffee and something Nate knew instinctively was just Brad. The groan that escaped him then was entirely involuntary, and he returned the kiss in kind.
Their tongues tangled together as Nate sank back on the couch, drawing Brad with him, twisting one leg between them until he could push it behind Brad so that Brad’s body rested in the vee of his legs. Brad surged forward, seeking a deeper kiss, and Nate let out an “Ah!” as Brad brushed against his cock, rubbing it against his boxers.
Peripherally, Nate was slightly dismayed to realize he’d been in nothing but boxers and a T-shirt the entire time Brad had been here, and had never even noticed until now. But then again, at this point it was just less to take off.
Brad was backing off, though, breaking the kiss to stare curiously down at Nate’s crotch, and Nate abruptly remembered. “You’ve never done this with a man, have you?” Nate asked.
Brad shook his head, and Nate expected him to draw back, but instead Brad pulled in his hand from where he’d had it resting on Nate’s shoulder, and placed it almost delicately over the bulge in Nate’s boxers, pressing lightly. Nate’s head fell back and he moaned, thrusting up into Brad’s hand without volition.
“Oh God,” he rasped, hips undulating, and he opened his eyes to find Brad’s on his face, pupils blown hot as he watched Nate’s reaction to his touch.
“You like that,” Brad said, and the wonderment in his voice was almost more arousing than his hand now rubbing gentle circles on the cloth over Nate’s dick.
“Yeah,” Nate agreed, huskily. “Oh, Jesus, yeah.”
Brad hesitated, then moved to grab the waistband of Nate’s boxers. Nate lifted his hips, and Brad slid the boxers down and then off his legs. Nate’s cock bobbed free, already most of the way to hard, and Brad stared at it in frank fascination, still hovering over Nate’s body. Nate held himself still, letting Brad look his fill and get used to the idea, even though it was kind of killing him to have those unbelievably blue eyes on him and yet have no corresponding touch on his skin.
“This, too,” Brad said, tugging at the bottom of Nate’s T-shirt. Nate tilted his upper body up just enough to pull the shirt off one-handed and toss it somewhere before laying back down, fully naked now. Brad’s gaze ran up and down the length of Nate’s body, and the appreciation he saw there encouraged Nate’s dick to full hardness. Brad noticed, and licked his lips, but still didn’t move for a long moment. Nate tried not to expire on the spot from anticipation.
Finally, though, Brad reached down and gently grasped Nate’s cock, watching Nate’s face. Nate inhaled sharply, and Brad smiled a bit before his gaze returned to his hand, his air that of intense concentration as he moved it lightly up once, then down along the shaft. Nate could practically see Brad working out in his head the angle and method of jacking someone else’s dick, as opposed to his own, and found it worryingly adorable. Christ, he was really head over fucking heels, wasn’t he?
Then coherent thoughts fled as Brad abruptly released him to spit once, twice in his hand, and then began stroking him with intent, hard and slow. Nate’s back arched and his mouth fell open in panting, bone-deep grunts.
“Brad - ah - God,” he gasped, and then Brad’s lips were pressing into his and his tongue sweeping into his mouth, hand never pausing in its pumping rhythm, and Nate whined wordlessly into Brad’s mouth as sensation pulsed through him in waves, drawing in, bearing down.
“So beautiful,” Brad whispered against his lips, and Nate let out a hoarse cry and came all over Brad’s hand and his own stomach.
Brad jacked him a few more times, milking the rest of his come out of him, until Nate made a protesting noise and pushed at his hand weakly. “Too much,” he rasped, and Brad let him go, seeming reluctant. Nate slumped, his breathing harsh and ragged.
Brad nosed at his neck, nuzzling him while Nate came down from his orgasm, not seeming to care that he was getting Nate’s come all over his shirt. “Good?” he murmured, pulling back to look Nate in the eye.
Nate gave him an incredulous look. “Are you kidding?” he asked, voice still scratchy. Brad grinned rather proudly and leaned in for a slow, lazy kiss.
Eventually Nate decided he could move again, and broke the kiss to reverse their positions, moving Brad up and back so that Nate was on top now. Brad was still fully clothed, wearing a button-down shirt and jeans and even shoes, Nate noted with disapproval. That would never do.
Brad lay back and watched as Nate began to unbutton his shirt. To his humiliation, however, his bad hand proved to be unequal to the task. Nate felt his state of happy post-orgasm fading, to be replaced by frustration, the third time his hand slipped trying to push the second button through its hole. Dammit.
Then Brad’s hands closed over his, squeezing them tightly for a moment before moving them gently aside so he could undo the buttons himself. Then he reached up and grasped the back of Nate’s neck, pulling him down for a thorough, sloppy, brain-melting kiss, reminding him of why they were here. By the time Brad broke off, Nate was panting again, frustration forgotten. Brad smiled at him, and Nate grinned back, heart clenching a little bit.
Returning his attention to Brad’s shirt, Nate pushed it open to reveal a superbly muscled torso, the kind that only came with serious dedication to staying in shape. Nate ran his hands appreciatively over the ridges and grooves of Brad’s abdominals and pectoral muscles. He’d never had a better reason to be glad that his left hand had regained nearly all its sensory capability, even if the muscle control was less than stellar.
Nate leaned down to lick each nipple, smile turning wicked at Brad’s involuntary jerk and grunt at the touch. He brushed lower, trailing his hands to dip into the waistband of Brad’s jeans, and then back outside to roam down, just missing Brad’s groin to grip his thighs briefly, stroking. Brad gave him a dirty look.
“Tease,” he accused. Nate just grinned some more, and kept going, scooting backwards to allow his palms to travel the considerable length of Brad’s legs to his feet, where Nate disposed of Brad’s shoes and socks as quickly as he could considering he was using just one hand.
Then he climbed back up Brad’s body to claim his mouth for another kiss. Their tongues slipped and slid together lazily, and Nate used the time to push and maneuver Brad’s shirt off his arms, though he was hindered by Brad’s insistence on running his hands up and down the expanse of Nate’s back, and then down to grip Nate’s ass firmly in both hands. Nate gasped into Brad’s mouth as the move ground his sensitive, spent cock into the denim of Brad’s jeans. Brad bucked up with a moan of his own, and to his amazement Nate could feel his own dick twitching slightly in renewed interest already. Jesus.
“Okay, jeans off now,” Nate said, and moved back so Brad could take care of it. If Nate’s hand wasn’t up to undoing a shirt, button-fly jeans were out of the question.
Brad didn’t move for a moment, and Nate glanced up to see him watching Nate with an odd, intent gaze. Nate raised his eyebrows in inquiry, impatient at the delay, and Brad moved then, unbuttoning his jeans and shoving them off his legs with much more satisfactory haste.
Brad turned out to be a briefs man. Nate kicked Brad’s jeans off the couch and bent down to breathe hotly onto the cloth directly over Brad’s cock.
“Fuck,” Brad said harshly.
“Exactly,” Nate replied, and rubbed his face over Brad’s crotch a few times, feeling the length inside harden. Then he pushed Brad’s legs apart and crawled back up between them, holding Brad’s gaze as he slid his body up until their cocks aligned, Brad’s still covered in cotton. He ground down on Brad, sliding his right hand behind Brad’s neck to pull him up into a filthy open-mouthed kiss. Brad made incoherent noises as Nate plundered his mouth and rocked back and forth over his cock relentlessly.
When they finally came up for air, Brad stared at Nate in something of a daze. “You toppy little fucker,” he breathed.
Nate gave him a mock-affronted look. “Who, me?” he said, and ducked down, mouthing over Brad’s neck. He let his good hand travel down the length of Brad’s body until he reached the waistband of Brad’s briefs, and skimmed just underneath, so close and not touching - yet. He enjoyed how Brad’s hips moved seemingly of their own accord, seeking contact and not finding it. One of Brad’s hands came up, but Nate batted it away, moving his mouth down to pay close attention to Brad’s nipples while his hand rubbed and circled beneath Brad’s underwear, just missing Brad’s cock every time.
“Ah, God - Jesus, Nate,” Brad said, half complaining, half just wrecked. He arched up as Nate laved his nipple lovingly over and over with his tongue.
“I,” Nate said, punctuating his words with more licks and nuzzles, “am not toppy at all.” He still hadn’t touched Brad’s cock, instead scratching lightly at the hair surrounding it, dipping into the creases where Brad’s thighs met his groin, brushing his balls ever so slightly.
Brad sucked in a breath. “You’re a fucking liar, is what you are,” Brad answered, huskily, hips shifting restlessly. Nate noted he made no move to reassert control, though. Interesting.
Nate pulled his hand out of Brad’s underwear and braced himself over Brad’s body with his knees and his right hand, looking into Brad’s eyes. “I’m going to suck your cock now,” he told him very seriously. “Unless you have any objections, of course.”
Brad gazed back, unwavering. “No objections here,” and he paused, “sir.”
Damn. So that’s the game they were playing; possibly, the one Brad had been playing privately all along. Nate felt a jolt of lust course through him. Brad, it seemed, had hidden kinky depths.
“Good,” Nate answered him. He smiled slowly, making sure it was predatory, and leaned forward to lick a stripe across Brad’s lips before ducking down to settle himself between Brad’s legs. He reached up to grasp Brad’s briefs and pulled them down, at last freeing Brad’s cock.
It was just as beautiful as the rest of him, and gloriously erect, curving up toward Brad’s stomach. Nate took a moment just to appreciate the sight before moving to rub his lips lightly along the shaft, enjoying the slip of velvety skin over rock-hard flesh.
Brad’s entire lower body tried to arch up, but Nate was done with teasing, so he weighted Brad’s hips down with his right arm, and swallowed his cock down in one long smooth slide.
“Oh shit God yes,” Brad groaned.
Then he lost words completely as Nate blew him fast and hard, using every trick he knew to take Brad apart. Brad moaned and shook and tried to thrust up, but Nate held him down and suckled relentlessly, using lips and tongue and just a hint of teeth. It wasn’t very long at all before Nate felt a hand in his hair, warning him that Brad was going to come, but he ignored it, and moments later Brad gave a ragged shout and spent into Nate’s mouth, and Nate swallowed it all down, every drop.
+
At some point they’d relocated from the couch to the bed, where Brad had given Nate a sloppy, messy, and distinctly inexpert blowjob. Nate had been so turned on, though, by the notion of being the first Brad had done this for, that he’d come again almost immediately.
Now, they tangled together in the wreckage of the bedclothes, smelling of sex and sweat and more sex. Nate couldn’t say exactly how many hours later it was, but the sun was low in the west, slanting in through his bedroom windows, and Nate was pretty sure he’d woken up sometime in the morning. So, quite a while, to say the least. Nate had dozed, on and off, but Brad was out like a light, and had been for a while. Which was only fair; he’d gotten a hell of a lot less sleep in the last day than Nate had.
Nate, for his part, was content to lay now with his head pillowed in the crook of Brad’s shoulder and listen to Brad’s deep, slow breaths, feel the warmth of the long, lean body next to his. He felt loose and easy for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, like he’d had a wire strung somewhere inside him that had been twisting slowly tighter and tighter, and then it had gone suddenly slack and fallen away.
It was wonderful. Nate didn’t kid himself that everything was going to be hunky-dory from here on out, but for the first time he was able to think that things could get better. He hadn’t even noticed until now that he hadn’t really believed that was possible. Jesus, no wonder he’d been… the way he’d been.
Eventually Nate realized that he was ravenous, and gently freed himself from Brad’s rather octopus-like tangle of arms and legs to slide quietly out of bed, leaning over to lay a soft kiss to Brad’s forehead before heading to the kitchen to scrounge up something to eat. He was munching his way through a giant bowl of Cheerios when the doorbell rang.
Nate glanced down at what he was wearing - a pair of ancient cotton pajama bottoms and nothing else - and sighed. Apparently everyone was going to get to see him en déshabillé these days.
He opened the door to find Walt on the other side, arms crossed and with a determined expression on his face.
“Walt!” Nate said, sounding sheepish even to his own ears. “Um. Hi.”
Walt raised an eloquent eyebrow, and looked Nate up and down closely. Nate saw his eyes pause on Nate’s neck, which Nate realized now sported at least two very impressive hickeys, and tried unsuccessfully not to flush with embarrassment.
“Hi,” Walt said at last, and without further ado brushed past Nate and inside. Feeling rather like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Nate followed.
They reached the living room just as Brad entered from the bedroom side, looking even more disheveled than Nate, eyes heavy-lidded. Nate was grateful he’d put his jeans back on, at least, even if they weren’t buttoned, but it could not have been more obvious what the two of them had been doing than if they’d staged the scene.
“Walt,” Brad said, in greeting perhaps, but it was hard to tell. Nate found a moment to be impressed that Brad could pull off his blank-faced Iceman act even when still half-asleep.
“Brad,” Walt answered, flatly, and then walked up to Brad and punched him in the face.
Part Four